


Test Subjects

by Neurtsy



Series: Barking at Sirens [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Blood and Gore, Death, Drugs, M/M, Other, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 04:02:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4772786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurtsy/pseuds/Neurtsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Louis do their best to make ends meet in a city of very bad thoughts. The city gets quarantined after a bunch of people go berserk and it's up to them to save the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Test Subjects

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shitucute](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shitucute/gifts).



> Your prompts said 'no limits' and 'free for all' and I'm really sorry about this.   
> Someone dropped out of the exchange last minute and I only had ten days to write. Second part up very soon.

Barking at Sirens Part 1 Test Subjects

 

Harry shoulders his way through the godless crawl of the crowd, all users, street kids, washed up and out and done for. He’s dying for a cigarette, his mouth feeling naked and empty without one, and inside his pockets, his fingers pick up a tremble.

A main stretch of pavement is roped off and closed down - another body, strung out with a blade sunk deep between cracked ribs. 

All the still-breathing bodies push in extra close in the limited space, and Harry is for once grateful for the broad stretch of his body; the bulk of his limbs he usually resents, wishing he could slip by unnoticed. 

He can feel breath staining his clothes a murkier grey, and clinging to his skin like ruined cellophane. 

 

His feet are itching in his shoes, urging him to get off the streets before the sun fails. He hates the way people watch from their windows and nooks in buildings, following his path like cat eyes in the dark, coppery and malignant. 

Finally, he slips away and finds a clear route, and winds his way up into the apartment. The water stains on the ceiling match the missing tiles on the floor. But there’s a mattress pressed into the corner, and it welcomes Harry’s aching body. 

He stuffs his handful of bills into the safe tucked between the mattress and the wall, and stretches out. He’s sore from the hours spent scrubbing down walls and hauling freight through the warehouse, and he maneuvers a bent cigarette from his pocket and lights up. It’s half gone after the first inhale, and the bruises along his torso seem to shake and tingle as he holds it in his lungs. 

He breathes out, cursing the job that’s barely paying for the dingy room as the smoke filters out into the air. By the time he takes a second drag, he’s repenting, bitterly thankful for the long hours and not-enough cash. 

It’s grueling, and his back is screaming riots by the end of the day, but it’s better than scavenging the junkyards for scrap metal, and tearing his hands to pieces, even through the issued gloves. Louis made him give that one up after the second infection.

 

It’s late, and Harry’s bones are begging him for sleep, but his eyes can’t close yet. The door is unlocked and the streetlights outside are pulsing a cracked white light in through the window, and he smokes, and he waits. 

 

Louis doesn’t get in until much later, when the crumpled ends of Harry’s cigarettes have turned to ash on the floor, and his eyes have narrowed to slits in the dark, trying to stay awake. 

He doesn’t speak when he locks the door behind him, puts a roll of bills into the box, and sheds his clothes. Harry doesn’t speak either, and Louis lays down close beside him, not touching. Harry lifts a hand to squeeze a quiet greeting into the strained bunch of his bicep. 

Sleep comes for them, wordless in the dark, and Harry tries to scrape the smell of strangers from Louis’ skin with his breaths. 

 

Harry rises with the sun, pulling the cracked shade down over the window so the light doesn’t wake Louis, and makes his way to the street. 

Heat is already beginning to snake up from the pavement, and Harry’s back is chilled with sweat by the time he gets to the warehouse. 

He’s dripping by noon, the boxes getting heavier, weighted down with a humid ache, and by evening his skin feels crusted over, filthy and gleaming. 

 

Louis’ there when Harry crawls back from his shift. It’s a rarity, and Harry undresses while Louis weighs powder and tips it into plastic caps. His hands don’t shake, but Harry can see the fatigue etching his face, aging him and sinking in his skin. 

Harry drops a sandwich onto the table a safe distance from the powder and digs his hand into the tight knot of Louis’ shoulder. He’s craving a shower, but the drive to sleep is stronger.

“Eat something, okay?” He says, and stretches his own aches out on the mattress. His eyes close, listening to Louis sing along to the songs filtering through the walls under his breath. Always shying away from the high notes, and Harry falls asleep wishing he wouldn’t do that. 

 

He’s up before the sun the next morning, making the time to squeeze in a shower before wearing out his shoes on the route to work again. The water’s cold and lifeless, but not enough to matter, and his skin barely flinches when he steps under the spray. 

He winds his way by on the street, around cracks in the pavement and roped off alleyways. 

A few more days of this haphazard routine and he’s hit with a day off. A breather, time to catch up on sleep, and keep his head down in the streets and try to stay out of trouble and harm’s way. 

Trouble stirs around him anyway, and he’s grateful for the company when Louis drags himself in after dark. 

“Good to see you,” Harry says when he fights his way through the door and closes it behind him. 

“What a day,” Louis says back. Harry can feel the way he’s trying to bring a light of humour to his voice, breathe some life into his sigh, but it falls heavy and sinks into the tiled floor. It’s the same weight that’s there in Harry’s muscles, and he wonders how after a day spent sleeping he can still feel so weary.

 

Louis slinks off to shower, washing the grime and grey of the outside world from his skin. He’s gone a long time - past the point of any hint of heat from the water - and Harry knows he’s trying to wash the unseen layers of blood from his hands. Drowning the guilt a while. 

When he comes back out, he’s damp and dismal. Harry lights up a cigarette.

 

Rogue police cars with their lights all blue and white go tearing up the potholed streets, and the stray dogs are hacking up a chorus in their wake.

 

“Bet that’s another pair of bodies,” Louis says once the light and noise has faded. His voice is gore and gloom in the tiny room. “There was another one this afternoon too.” Harry doesn’t mention the closed bit of sidewalk on his route home. It feels like Louis can read it from the ragged weight to his shoulders already. 

“Murder or overdose?” Harry asks instead. He doesn’t really want to hear the answer. 

“What’s the difference?” Louis says, heaviness and grime dragging his voice down. Harry knows what’s coming and he’s helpless to stop it, so he inches his way closer to him on his knees, and tucks an arm around Louis’ waist.

“Either someone kills them, or they overdose, and that’s just me killing them from selling them this shit in the first place.” Louis’ voice is running like tap water and Harry can feel it seeping over his fingers. He takes another drag and puts out the stub on the floor.

“No one’s forcing them to take that stuff,” Harry says quietly, and Louis’ head drops to his shoulder like a sigh. The gentle contact makes him shiver through the warmth. “If they weren’t getting it from you they’d be getting it from someone else.” 

“It still feels like I’m killing them,” Louis whispers, a jagged knife-sharp slice cutting straight from his lungs. 

“I’m just so sick of this, H. It’s so dirty out here. The streets are always dirty, our clothes are always dirty. When was the last time we were clean?” Harry doesn’t have an answer for him, looking down at the dark rings caked under his fingernails, bitten down to flaking stubs. 

“I just want to be clean,” Louis whispers, and his voice is a cracking white amid the filth and shadows. 

 

Harry doesn’t feel clean either. He feels worn and stretched and scraped, too much of him pulled tight over threadbare sheets and too long hours, waiting awake in the dark. He barely knows what it is that he’s waiting for. 

Maybe it’s for Louis to crawl in at some ungodly hour, smelling like smoke and stale air, with money from pushing and stories of his latest pull. 

With every mouthful of words he shares, Harry gets images of painted nails and razor burned jaws, hands and skin and a tart taste across his tongue. It makes his dreams restless and clothes putrid. 

 

“Get some sleep,” is what Harry finally says. He’s out of comfort to offer, and Louis isn’t prying him for any. They’re both tired, from every cruel angle of the word. 

 

Harry’s head is spinning when he wakes hours later. The sunlight through the cracked shade is yellow and pale, lighting up the dust in the air. Louis’ sleeping soft beside him, and Harry’s careful not to wake him as he rises, reluctant to leave at all.

 

The power grid is out when he gets to work, and faces on the street seem weird and restless. It makes Harry nervous. 

 

He hears kids on the street gossiping while he works, whispered rumours of a banned substance that’s slipped its way through the cracks, hushed and horrified recounts of what it’s done to people. 

_“It’s the same thing that they wiped off the grid a few years back.”_  
“But someone’s brought it back - I heard they made it even worse.”   
“The stuff that changes people’s brains. Not just damages - changes the whole layout.” 

As the sun burns and bleeds orange and red in the sky, Harry sweats, listening to the looping voices, the warehouse door propped open to let light into the back room. 

_“Someone downtown took it - doubled in size.”_  
“Throwing cars around - ”  
“Screaming for hours before he bit it.” 

Even the other employees start whispering, usually all thin and grey and quiet, and Harry keeps to himself, listening and wrenching his back each time he bends. 

_“Heard it made his bones all hollow.”_  
“And he welded sheet metal to his arms.”  
“Built himself wings - ”  
“He flew into the electrical wires. Burned right up.”  
“They dissected the body after. Wasn’t just the wiring that got him. They said his central nervous system was fried. Something about the parts connecting in his brain - the stuff fucked them up and he went crazy.” 

 

There’s still no power by the time he makes it back to the apartment, and he lets himself in in the dark. He falls asleep still waiting up for Louis, but it’s an anxious and uneasy rest.

 

He stirs hours later, the colour outside the window a strange and unfriendly shade of grey. There’s a shape upright by the table across the room, narrow in the dark. 

“You’re back late,” Harry comments, his throat thick, and Louis glances over at him tiredly. 

“New order came in. I’ve got to shift all this in a couple days.” He gestures helplessly to the table, and when Harry stands shakily and makes his way over, he sees a tin case, stuffed full of plastic bags and red capsules. 

“Is that even possible?” Harry asks, mutely horrified by the quantity and colour, both garish and confrontational. 

“I don’t know,” Louis sighs. His shoulders are caught in a stiff line, and his posture is tense and shifty. “God, I need to sleep.” 

Harry watches as he crosses the room and sits down heavily on the mattress. 

“Do you want some help selling?” He asks quietly, letting his eyes trip over the mess on the table before he turns and sits beside Louis. The springs creak.    
“You’re too big. You walk into a room, everyone notices,” Louis says with a sigh. They’re talking in hushed voices, always just shy of being paranoid about the thin walls and shadowy figures down through the window. 

“Right,” Harry sighs back, and knocks their shoulders together weakly. 

“It’s got to be nice sometimes, though,” Louis says, trying for a lighter tone, but the late hour and weight of the night pulls it back down. “All eyes on you, never have any trouble finding someone to go home with, do you?” Harry shrugs off the taunt, mind still blurred from waking at such a strange hour.

“You’re not exactly invisible yourself,” he counters. 

“I am,” Louis argues, almost bristling, but a bit too worn down to pull it off. “I got good at it. Certain places, it’s not good to be noticed by most types.”

“Doesn’t stop people from looking when you’re out though,” Harry says, digging up a sideways smile when Louis frowns and turns to look at him. “Bet they don’t say no too often when you offer.”

Louis’ quiet for a while, studying Harry in the dark room.

“Maybe if I was somewhere not so nasty. Not many people out here looking to kiss dealers.” 

It’s Harry’s turn to fall silent, his breathing slow and dark, and his limbs feel heavy, still only a beat away from falling back into sleep.

 

“I’d kiss you,” he finally says. Louis seems to do a double take, an incredulous and bemused expression sinking into the flesh of his face. 

“You’re joking,” he says, tossing the hair from his face and brushing off Harry’s words. But he leans in towards him, almost challengingly. 

“I’m not,” Harry says, quietly, dampened in the face of all of Louis’ brashness. “Why would I?” Louis’ eyes are all over him, fierce and searching for some sign, some signal Harry isn’t sure of. 

“I don’t know. Maybe because no one else has ever been serious about it,” he finally says. He angles it easily, like it’s some offhand comment he’d rather shrug off, a bitter taste at the back of his throat. 

 

“No one?” Harry asks in a small voice after a long silence. “But you’ve always said - ”

“I know,” Louis cuts him off. His shoulders have dropped back inwards and Harry can see the narrowness in him again. 

“That guy in the bar though - ”

“Didn’t happen.”

“ - and that girl by the pool table - ”

“Made it up.” 

“Why?” Louis seems to have run out of responses, gritting his teeth and angling away from Harry’s imploring. 

 

“You didn’t have to,” Harry finally says. Louis draws his feet up onto the edge of the mattress, wrapping his arms around his shins. 

 

“And I did mean it,” Harry adds after a silence has wrapped spidery fingers around their throats. 

“Please don’t fuck around with me, H,” Louis whispers. The light coming in from behind the glass is pale blue, and it washes over their bodies. Harry dimly registers that it’s morning, and the sun’s on it’s way. 

“I’m not - I wouldn’t,” Harry says back. He’s not sure why they’re whispering, but a breath louder would break the spell they’ve woven around each other. 

“Please,” Louis says again, and there seems to be a barrier in his throat, stopping the words from fully forming. “Because I couldn’t take it. Not from you.” 

“I would never lie to you,” Harry says, fierce and low, and his hands come forward to lock around Louis’ wrists. “I love you.” 

Louis squeezes his eyes shut, and the tears that slip out between the cracks seem to be torn out from inside, and Harry feels like he’s hurting him, gripping too tight trying to hold on to him. 

“I do too, H,” Louis says after a gasping eternity crosses between them. “So much, I’m burning up with it.” 

 

Harry’s out of things to say after that, his heart caught too far up in his throat, and he lays Louis down next to him, drawing a thin cover up over their bodies. Louis’ exhaustion is a tangible thing, radiating off from his skin in thin rays, and Harry finds it’s contagious. 

 

Harry stirs, feeling pink and weightless. His skin feels thin and strange beneath the blanket, and it takes a few rounds of inhaling and exhaling before he can pinpoint what’s changed. 

It’s Louis that’s different, pale and waking beside him, a fragility etched into his eyes when he looks at him, a rose-coloured tint in the way he smiles softly.

“Morning,” Louis says, and as Harry blinks awake, fingers trail softly down the curve of his spine. “You were dreaming,” he adds. 

“I’d rather be awake for once,” Harry replies. His voice is a velvet growl, his eyes focusing slowly. 

“Bad dreams?” Louis asks, and Harry reaches out, running a hand down his side. 

“I guess,” he says, marveling at the feel of Louis’ warm skin beneath his fingers. “Just leftover troubled thoughts from yesterday.” 

“What sort of troubled thoughts?” Louis asks, his eyes closing under the caress.

“I was hearing stories about people. The one’s taking this new drug,” Harry says. “Have you heard it too?”

“Sure,” Louis says. “Kids are calling this one guy Icarus. Lost his mind and made himself wings, or something.” His eyes crack open to look at Harry, lines of pale blue. 

“Is it really as dangerous as they’re saying?” Harry asks. His arm is caught up in the motion, smoothing up and down the gentle press of Louis’ side. 

“People always exaggerate,” Louis says back. “But it’s not some recreational thing to mess around with. People don’t know what they’re getting into. It’s - ” he pauses, adjusting himself on the mattress, and inching his legs closer in towards Harry’s. “It’s something that was originally designed to combat drowsiness.” He smiles tiredly when Harry coughs out a disbelieving laugh. 

“How did something like that turn into...” he trails off, gesturing ambiguously. He inches a toe closer, and Louis lays his leg on top, tangling them together. 

“Someone’s always trying to come up with the new miracle drug. And this time amateurs ran off with the failed test runs.” Louis’ voice is morning-low, his eyes half lidded as he talks.

“Does it really do the things they say it does?” Harry asks quietly. 

“I don’t know what you’ve heard. It alters the synapses. Turns the brain-web into it’s own circulation system. This endless loop, no delay between signals. Heightens aggression sometimes.” 

“Did some guy really become twice his own size, and toss around cars?” Harry asks, taking a moment to process. Louis yawns. 

“I heard that the adrenaline jacked up his system. Blood flow probably increased, muscles swelled. I don’t know how much of that is overblown, though,” he says, coming closer and nestling his forehead against the dip in Harry’s collarbones. 

“It makes me nervous,” Harry says quietly. 

 

He’s still nervous when he finally forces himself out of bed and out of the soft heat Louis’ body has cradled around his own. 

Nervous about the odd energy coming from the sky outside the closed window, all dark and sour. 

Louis stirs, pacing behind him as he gets ready, stepping into his shoes, trying to put off his departure. 

 

“Stay safe, okay?” Louis says quietly before Harry steps outside. 

“I will,” he answers, lingering just long enough to press a kiss to Louis’ temple. He smells of sweat and glass and car exhaust, and Harry can’t breathe enough of it in at once. 

 

There’s still no power when Harry arrives at the warehouse, and the thrums of people on the streets seem to be slowly frenzied and lit with agitated undertones. 

Time passes sluggishly as he scours floors and does what he can in the dark storage rooms. He feels skittish, the sounds from outside all clatter and din in the distance. 

 

The noises outside rise and fall while his work bleeds out into hours. He tries to tell himself that the the shouts and sounds are amplified, distorted through the walls, but by midday there’s no mantra he can say to soothe the panic building in his solar plexus. 

He has hours left, but the distraction from the sounds of people and action sinks into his skull and drives him out into the light. 

 

Outside it’s chaos. 

 

Bodies scared and violent are moving in ruins, waving limbs and shouting, calling out, some screaming. The voices blend into one raw-throat shriek of mania and fear, and Harry finds himself swept along into the current. 

 

_“Not letting us out - ”_  
“Trapping us - ”  
“Running away - ”  
“They’re leaving us here to die!” 

 

The words seem to bleat out of one thousand skulls and teeth all at once, and the mad desperation leaks like gasoline across Harry’s skin. 

 

_“No one’s coming to help us!”  
“No one’s getting out of here!”_

 

Fear. Sweat. 

 

And gunshots and footsteps and bones pressing up behind and beside him.

The words and sobs from so many lungs sink into his skin, and when he’s pushed and cornered to the edge of the crowd, and sees the roadblocks and wiring, all he feels is a raw cold panic slipping through his guts. 

 

Too many people blending into an unrecognizable swarm. Bodies frothing like sea foam from churning waves, faces upturned and drowning, mouths gaped and wailing. 

And Harry can feel the undertow coming, lapping at his knees, deadly in certainty that it’s going to pull him under. 

 

He struggles to stay afloat, trapped between corpses and sailors swollen from the sea, until his glassy eyes find a familiar face in the water. 

 

“Harry!” Louis parts through the crowd, all elbows and terror. When he makes it through, he throws his arms around Harry’s neck, holding on and suffocating. “I didn’t know what I was going to do if I couldn’t find you!” 

They shove their way towards the apartment, Louis’ nails cutting into the flesh of Harry’s arm the whole way back. 

 

“They quarantined the city, Lou,” Harry says once he’s shut and locked the door behind them. His words are all black and blue and dripping with shock. “They put a wall up and they left us.” 

“I know. They’re gone,” Louis says back, his tongue tangled with salt and seaweed. “All the officials. The law enforcement.” 

“What’s going to happen?” Harry asks, his eyes slowly coming back to life, wild and clouded. The screams and footsteps on the street below sound feral.

“I don’t know,” Louis whispers, and there’s a spiking promise of tears behind his words.

“There must be someone coming for us,” Harry hisses, a sting unfolding across his bones and stomach from the shock sliding off like dead skin. 

 

Louis kisses him with dry lips and the edges of his teeth, and Harry feels like crying when he blinks and it’s all over. Louis makes a sound, a nervous and questioning mewl and Harry shushes him through the ache, speaking into his skin, telling him with his hands that it’s okay. 

 

“What are we supposed to do now?” Louis asks, but it’s barely voiced as a question, just a run down, worn thin gasp of words. 

“Try to make do?” Harry offers. His tone is just as grey.

 

They find there is no ‘making do.’ 

 

They stay holed up in the apartment, pretending to sleep at times and listening to the sounds of glass breaking beneath tires. The pavement seems to be alive, gasping out hot and desperate breaths that smell like tar and sulphur. 

There’s a shake to Harry’s joints, a weightless urge in his guts to just keep lighting cigarettes, and Louis presses close to him and shakes too. 

 

They try to leave, find some way out, but there’s nothing but dead ends and crowds, menace and violence the only things black enough to open doors and set the streets on fire. 

 

So they hole up again.

 

“It’s horrible out there,” Harry breathes. His lungs feel stained, blacker and heavier with each inhale, but he can’t stop drawing in breaths of smoke. 

“All the bad parts of people, that’s all there is,” Louis says back. His voice is stretched out and wiry. 

“There’s got to be someone coming. They know we’re here. They know how many people are stuck here.” Determination is struggling to paint over the ash and uncertainty in his tone. 

“Maybe they just don’t care,” Louis says, strangled and weary. Harry tries to speak, dig up some convincing string of support, but his lips part and fall open to silence. He tries to find and embody comfort by locking his arms around Louis’ frame and holding tight, but even the embrace feels watery and bleak. 

 

They leave the apartment again days later. Smoke seems to be filtering out from Harry’s lungs up into the sky, dyeing it grey and hopeless. 

They walk, seemingly in circles around the edges of the city, penned in and captured. Louis spoke softly of wanting to feel the wind on his skin, but even the air outside feels flat and lifeless. 

Harry tries to tell himself that walking helps, stretching out the kinks in their legs, and giving the illusion of progress, productivity. 

But as they go, they feel more and more like caged animals, their mouths around exhaust pipes, choking silently. 

 

The heart of the noise and fury seems to be furthest from the central streets, and more strung out alone the barricades sealing them in with each other. 

All Harry wants is to avoid violence, and he steers them along through walkways and over cracked pavement, Louis pressing in close to his side, a little shadow stitched of shivers keeping him warm. 

 

“Crazy how all this could have happened in just...” Louis trails off, touching his skull to the press of Harry’s shoulder. “Don’t even know how many days it’s been,” he adds in a dark and heavy whisper. 

His words fade out, referred to the trash and glass and gasoline stains littering the ground. Windows are smashed in and everything has the hushed feel of being boarded up and battened down, despite the guttural sounds of heat an anger bubbling up from the edges of the city. 

 

A bad feeling is creeping up on Harry, purposeful and ugly. He tightens his hold on Louis in response to it, keeping him close with panicked and clammy hands. 

And Louis doesn’t seem to want to stray, his footsteps tiptoed and anxious against the grit. 

Together the draw further away from the main dregs - the closely bunched shops and buildings, fronts all smashed in, feel too exposing, out in the open and filthy. 

 

But as they creep along, they find the narrower streets to be more foreboding, and even less welcoming than the others, broken to pieces. 

Their path cuts off leading to a stocky alley, and their eyes slowly adjust, legs fighting twin urges to break into a sprint. The only thing keeping them from running are the gates and wires imprisoning them. 

 

There’s a smell coming off of the ground and crawling over to them on skinned knees. It hits Harry in the gut and makes his hairs stand on end. Instinct has him drawing back, stumbling away and taking a clawing hold of Louis’ shoulders, pulling him away. 

 

It isn’t fast enough to save them from the sight. 

 

A bludgeoned corpse lays swollen from the sun, limbs all at awful angles, skull ground to powder. It’s naked, and stained, dripping and bloated beyond any recognition of features or sex, and Harry thinks with a heaving stomach that the holes and gouges covering the throat and abdomen look too much like human bite marks to be anything else. 

He thinks of the screams and sounds and scuffles that have been piling up outside their windows, and he twists away from the sight - and the darkened shapes further on in the alley he’s convinced are more of the same - and vomits on the pavement. It’s mostly water and bile, and his spine pinches and twists. 

Beside him, Louis’ skin has gone the coldest and palest shade it can muster with being dead, and his knees twist, liquid and boneless. 

Something nearby snaps - tires, boot treads, something heavy over asphalt and glass, and they snap too, and finally start running. 

 

“This is what’s been going on,” Louis says when they’re back, locking the door with fingers alive with violent trembles, hiding small with glassy eyes in the dark of their room. “They said it could make people more violent, but I didn’t think...” 

“Who’s ‘they?’” Harry asks, his voice a scratched up gasp, and he silences the raggedness of his breathing with another cigarette. 

“Just...drug people,” Louis says meekly, his hands tugging into his lap. “You know...” Harry lets it go. He hates the company Louis’ forced to keep, and he knows he hates it too. 

 

“There’s no one coming for us,” Harry says after a lifetime passes by. Defeat is dragging his skeleton down and his arms fall flat like deadweight over Louis’ shoulders. 

“I think everyone who left knew what was happening already,” Louis replies, and without opening his eyes, Harry can tell he’s crying in that quiet, weightless way. 

 

“Someone has to do something,” Louis says, drawing in uneven breaths in the time it takes for Harry to finish another cigarette and light another. 

“Who?” Harry asks wearily. “Enforcements are gone.” He smooths out the sheet beneath his hand. It’s thin and sweat stained and the familiarity of it beneath his palm makes him ache. 

Louis goes silent beside him, and shrinks into Harry’s side. With each sound of movement and distant wailing outside, he flinches. 

 

“How much of it is the drug, do you think?” Louis asks quietly, what could be hours later. He shifts so that his head is ducked into the dip of Harry’s shoulder. “And what else is just...people...doing horrible things...”

“I’m sure it’s both,” Harry sighs. “I think if the wrong kinds of people got into that shit, then they’ve turned themselves into something awful.”

“And now we’ve got no one standing in their way,” Louis whispers. “God...it wasn’t meant to be mixed. But users don’t care, they just take it all at once. And everyone calls it _overdosing_...It’s not _overdosing,_ it’s murder, suicide - ”

“This isn’t your fault,” Harry says, and Louis falls into quiet disbelief. 

 

“I’d take it if I could,” Harry says after a silence, and Louis twists his head to look up at him. “Just to be someone to oppose them. Wouldn’t know where to begin, though,” he says, coughing up a laugh that dies on his tongue. “No idea where to find something like that.” 

It’s Louis’ turn to cough, and draw his arms around his body, compact and shrinking. 

Harry’s head turns in slow motion, the movement finally forcing Louis’ head off from his shoulder, and he dips his chin down to his chest in an attempt to hide. 

“Tell me you’re not serious,” Harry breathes, and Louis buries his face in his hands. 

“I’m so sorry, Harry,” he says, his voice more of a hitching scream held beneath his breath than real words. “I didn’t want any of this!”

Harry stands, legs uneven and a blackened dizziness attacking his eyes. He shifts forwards, a strange stagger until he comes to the table at the edge of the room. It’s all still there, the plastic bags and red capsules, bloody coloured, sleek and fat. 

“This...” 

“I didn’t think any of this would happen!” Louis said from the mattress, also trying to stand and make his way over through the dark.

“No,” Harry says softly, a wilted agreement. 

“Don’t know if it’d even be worth it, though,” he continues, teeth gnawing at his lip in between halting sentences. “Everyone who takes it just ends up mad.” Louis huffs at this, knocking his shoulders against Harry’s, standing beside him. Outside there’s a flare up of screeching tires and metal. 

“But maybe that’s because the only people who take it have already taken everything else on the shelf.” He turns, gripping Louis’ bicep in a curled hand. “Better than sitting here and waiting to die.” His voice has adopted a wild and heated lilt.

“What are you saying, Harry,” Louis says, the softness in his voice countered by the spark that’s lighting up in his eyes under Harry’s rough and fiery attention. 

“I’m saying...we’re young. We’re healthy. We don’t fuck around with that other stuff,” Harry adds, the soft curl of his hand a bruising pressure against Louis’ arm. “Maybe we could make a difference.”

“You’re really serious,” Louis says, and he seems to deflate, and let himself fall into Harry’s hold. 

“You said that someone has to do something,” Harry presses, his fingers squeezing harder as a swell of sound rises outside. It sounds like animals, low and hungry and in heat. He pretends it’s animals. 

“You think we could do something,” Louis says. He doesn’t voice it as a question. “You think we could stop...whatever it is that’s out there...” He trails off. Neither of them want to think about the things happening outside their walls. 

“If there’s no one coming for us...” Harry lets out an unsteady breath, and Louis’ surprised when it’s not ash flavoured and grey. “I don’t want to just wait around for more bad things to happen. If those people have really turned themselves into... whatever’s happened, I want to try to stop it.”

“What have we got to lose,” Louis says, softly echoing Harry’s desperation. 

They both fall silent after that, and Harry presses their bodies close together. In the quiet of the room, the risk at stake seems monstrous. 

 

The capsules go down so easy Harry’s left with an empty feeling at how little he felt, and how unchanged his body feels, breathing and worn.


End file.
